Apple just revealed a new brand identity for Apple Music. The logo with its iconic pink and white color scheme is gone. The design is almost identical, but we now have a monochrome look for the icon, with a black tone set against a white backdrop. Of course, there are also elements of liquid glass alongside the corners. That’s just about it. What’s fascinating is the story and how Apple actually landed on this visual.
The company says it worked with musician Fred again.. and NEST Acoustics to come up with the new design. Interestingly, in a brief video, Apple says that it actually used music to create the visuals. The video shows an Apple Music logo-shaped item submerged in a clear liquid, with ripples periodically appearing on the surface. ” Essentially, the idea was to create the perfect sound wave. We take a frequency, and we play it through a rig,” says the company. Take a look at the video below:
The musical notes were played using a tool called a transducer, while the liquid you see is apparently a clear mineral oil. When different frequencies reach the liquid surface, the vibration signals traveling through air are turned into physical vibrations, and as a result, you see those ripples appear on the surface of the liquid. The idea is not too dissimilar from what Apple has already done with the design language of its operating systems.
When Apple first introduced the Liquid Glass design language, which was a pretty hot topic of contention and required a handful of visual iterations, the company gave us a glimpse of a similar approach to the design process. We had members of Apple’s design team experimenting with the interaction of transparent fluid, glass, and similar materials. Subsequently, Apple gave a glass-inspired look to the icons in its operating systems, a far cry from the skeuomorphic design that was once a hallmark of Apple’s software in the Steve Jobs era.
